You don’t think things can be easy.

In fact, you fight it.

There are moments, people, glimpses of simple happiness that sneak up on you in such a way that when you catch yourself thinking — you’re scared.

You don’t trust it.

You don’t trust it because you fight the hurt just as much as you do the happiness.

You’ve learned that life has to be hard, you have to struggle, and yet you think there will be the perfect relationship, job, house when it all comes together and you can finally be happy.

But when it comes, you push it away because it threatens everything you know to be true and all you are comfortable with; hard.

You don’t know if you deserve easy.

You don’t think this goodness can last. It doesn’t feel safe.

You’ve learned that higher highs mean lower lows so you want to protect yourself.

You trust unhappiness more than happiness because betting on disappointment is a sure thing. It’s never let you down in the past, so you just don’t let yourself get your hopes up.

You fabricate unhappiness as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because we’re taught happiness is conditional.

“First this, then happiness.”

But then it seems ever-elusive as we start checking off the boxes. It’s never enough, because you never feel like enough, and so you search and control and strive for the next thing thinking it’ll be enough. That must be the answer to fulfillment and peace. Then you get there and it’s fleeting, you barely feel it. So you think that must be the answer to fulfillment and peace. And so on and so on…

Life can’t just be being and flowing. …can it?

That idea threatens the logic you’ve been taught to leverage with your mighty mind. You think you have to prove your worthiness and can’t simply be happy without a reason so you overanalyze and overthink yourself out of the good that’s meant to be. All betting on “one day” it’ll fall into place so you think and work and do trying to get there.

You believe if you’re unhappy, suffer, and struggle long enough then finally you’ll earn your happiness. As if your unhappiness works for you and will finally pay off.

But therein lies the problem; thinking you need to do something before you can be.

Because it’s actually so simple. Simpler than you could ever think.

It’s less thinking. More being and being happy, first.

For so long I thought if I could just do enough, then I would finally have what I want, and then I could be happy. But once I got what I wanted it either never felt like enough and I was already on to the next thing or I could never reach what I wanted.

Either way happiness felt like a catch-22.

I had it all backwards.

You can’t struggle, suffer, prove, do your way to happiness.

If we let ourselves be first, starting with joy, then the doing flows and the having comes. And comes easily.

It sounds simple. It is… and it’s not.

One of those mindfuck things, again. One of the things I’ve grappled with so I can help guide you. So your inner world can be rock solid no matter what’s happening in your outer world. So your outer world comes together 😉

I’m not going to say I have it all figured out so now I have exactly what I want and am finally happy. It’s the opposite actually; I’ve lost everything I’ve ever wanted and I’m happier than ever.

That’s where/when the magic begins.

Get off that hamster wheel, friend.

Deanne